It might be premature for the politically “unattached” to join the Congress leadership in going cock-a-hoop over the results of elections to the Delhi University Students Union, yet the affiIiated National Students Union of India’s bagging the top two seats is certainly a morale-booster after suffering a string of electoral reverses.
More significant, perhaps, is the BJP/RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad being ejected from the position it has held these past five years. It must also be noted that while the “Red bastion”, the JNU students union, was never really under serious threat, the ABVP’s much-touted effort to make a breakthrough there met with no success.
The jury is out on whether those two verdicts add up to a shift in the political wind, yet the DUSU poll is often seen as an early barometer of swinging fortunes. One explanation being that a vast majority of DUSU voters are participating in their maiden poll, hence heavily influenced by the thinking in their homes ~ the Congress would certainly lap up that line.
A more relevant explanation could be that so-focused is the BJP on the Modi-Shah vote-winning formula that it has neglected to nurse a second line of leadership (not that the Congress has done so), and so comes up short when neither actively campaign ~ as happened in the assembly by-poll in Bawana when an AAP turncoat was made to bite the dust despite switching loyalties to “saffron”. Rather ridiculous is the claim of a Congress sycophant that the scales tilted after Rahul Gandhi’s speech at UCLA in Berkeley ~ wonder how many DU students had heard/read what the Congress’ vice-president had to say about in-house arrogance.
Realistically, in a university context, the swing followed the ABVP-triggered violence in Ramjas College earlier in the year which had run counter to the traditions of DU. Not irrelevant in that context were the repeated concerns expressed by the former President, Pranab Mukherjee, that the “space” for independent and liberal thinking was shrinking.
True that the Prime Minister extolled those very same qualities on the anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s historic speech in Chicago, but the BJP has yet to bridge the gap between what its leaders say and the actions of its cadre. A series of events in JNU substantiate that contention.
That could be the real lesson of the two university polls, a victory for progressive thought in a forward-looking section of the community. The students-wing of the AAP is slowly settling down, wisely it did not contest the DUSU poll but did moderately well in college-level contests.
The Congress cannot afford to think the tables have been turned, there are assembly elections in coming months, and another round of DUSU elections ahead of the “big one” in 2019 ~ can it consolidate this week’s gains?